“We must find my staff,” Brind’Amour whispered.
“How?” Luthien balked, looking around at the endless tangles and shadows of the Saltwash. “We have no chance . . .”
“Sssh!” Brind’Amour hissed. “Keep your voice quiet. Dragons have the most excellent of hearing.”
Again as if on cue, there came a great rush of wind and the canopy above the two exploded into a fiery maelstrom. Brind’Amour stood as if frozen in place, gaping at the conflagration, and only Luthien’s quick reaction, the young Bedwyr tackling the wizard into a shallow pool and throwing himself, and his magical shielding cape, over Brind’Amour’s prone form, saved the old man from the falling brands. Great strands of hanging moss dove down to the ground, coiling like snakes as they landed, their topmost ends burning like candle wicks. Not so far from the companions a tree, its sap superheated by the fires, exploded in a shower of miniature fireballs, hissing and sputtering as they landed on the pools or muddy turf.
“Up, and run away!” Brind’Amour cried as soon as the moment had passed, the blazing branches smoldering quickly in the dampness of the marsh.
Luthien tried to follow that command, stumbling repeatedly on the pool’s slippery banks. In the distance, he heard Riverdancer’s frantic neighing, and then, as he turned back in the direction of the area where he had left the horse, he saw the approach of doom.
He grabbed for Brind’Amour, thinking to pull the man back into the mud, but the wizard darted away. The cover was not so thick anymore—certainly not enough to shield them from the penetrating gaze of a dragon!—and Brind’Amour knew that to cower was to be caught.
No, the old wizard determined, they had come in here to battle Greensparrow, and so they would, meeting his charge.
Brind’Amour scrambled up to the trunk of an ancient willow, a graceful spreading mass that had accepted the first dragon pass as though it were no more than a minor inconvenience. “Lend me your strength,” the wizard whispered to the trunk, and he embraced the tree in a gentle hug.
The dragon rushed overhead, looking about the area it had so brutally cleared. It let out a shrill shriek as it crossed over Brind’Amour, and immediately began its long and graceful turn.
Luthien called out a warning to the wizard, but Brind’Amour seemed not to hear. Nor did the wizard appear to take any note at all of the dragon. He stood hugging the tree, whispering softly, his eyes closed.
Luthien inched closer, not wanting to disturb the man, but keeping a watchful eye for the returning dragon. He started to call out to Brind’Amour again, but stopped, startled, when he noticed that the fingers of the wizard’s hands were gone, as if they had simply sunken into the willow! Luthien looked to the man’s face, was touched by the serenity there, then looked back to see that Brind’Amour’s arms were in up to the wrists!
“Lend me your strength,” Brind’Amour whispered again, but in a language that Luthien could not understand, a language of music, not words, of the eternal harmony that had brought the world into being, that gave the tree its strength and longevity, the language of the very powers that sustained all the world.
Luthien did not know what he should do, and when he looked back the way the dragon had flown, to see the creature speeding toward him once more, he could only cry out helplessly to his entranced friend and throw himself to the side, away from Brind’Amour and the willow, to the base of another large tree.
Greensparrow issued a deafening roar, culminating with the release of that tremendous fire. At the same moment, Brind’Amour cried out, as if in ecstasy, and a green glow engulfed the wizard, ran up his arms and to the tree, then up the tree, intensifying as it spread wide along the branches.
The hot dragon flames fell over them all; Luthien tried to dig a hole in the ground. His eyes burned and he felt as if his lungs would explode, and he could only imagine the grim fate that had befallen Brind’Amour, who was not protected by the marvelous crimson cape.
Indeed those fires did fall over the wizard, but Brind’Amour felt them not at all, no more than did the ancient willow. For Brind’Amour was a part of that tree then, and it a part of him, and while he had taken from it its ancient resilience, it had gained the wizard’s sentience. Stooping, pliable limbs reached up from the swamp, swatting and entangling the dragon as it flew past.
Greensparrow was caught completely off his guard as one great limb whipped up to smack him right between the eyes and another caught fast on his left wing. Over and around the dragon spun. Wood bent and twisted and tore apart.
Now Brind’Amour did cry out in pain, and the sheer shock of the dragon hit destroyed his symbiosis with the tree, left him sitting on the wet ground, wondering why wisps of smoke were rising from his robes. He groaned as he considered the willow, many of its branches torn away, the trunk half-uprooted and tilting to the side, the whole of the ancient tree nearly pulled from the ground by the weight of its catch.
Brind’Amour wanted to go to the willow, to offer comfort and thanks, to try to lend his powers that it might better heal. He had other problems, though, for the dragon had been taken from the sky, to crash down heavily, clearing a swath a hundred yards long. But the beast was far from defeated. Greensparrow pulled himself free of the tangled and broken flora and righted himself, facing the wizard. One wing had been torn and would need time to heal; the dragon could not fly. Like a gigantic cat, Greensparrow crouched, tamping down his back legs, his yellow-green orbs locked on the puny man who had given him such pain.
A single leap brought him close enough to loose his fires once again, engulfing Brind’Amour.
But the old wizard was ready. With his magic, he reached down to the earth at his feet, drawing the moisture from it, meeting the dragon fire with a wall of water. Then he loosed his own response, a blazing line of energy that cut through the fires and slammed at Greensparrow.
Luthien huddled and trembled, blocked his ears from the thunderous roars of beast and flame. It went on and on, seconds seeming like hours. All that Luthien wanted was a single gasp of air, but that would not come. All that he wanted was to get up and run away, but his feet would not answer his call. Then the world started to slip into blackness, an endless pit, it seemed, and he was falling.
The sounds receded.
Then it ended, the fires and the energy bolt, and Greensparrow and Brind’Amour stood facing each other. Brind’Amour knew by the way the serpentine neck suddenly snapped back and by the beast’s wide eyes that his resilience had surprised the beast.
“You have betrayed all that was sacred to the ancient brotherhood,” the old wizard cried.
“The ancient fools!” the dragon replied in a snarling, resonating voice.
Brind’Amour was caught off guard, for the dragon’s words did not come easily, every syllable stuttered and intermixed with feral snarls.
“Fools, you say,” the wizard replied. “Yet that brotherhood is where you first found your power.”
“My power is ancient!” the dragon answered with a roar. “Older than your brotherhood, older than you!”
Brind’Amour understood it then, recognized the struggle between the wills of this dual being. “You are Greensparrow!” he cried, trying to force the issue.
“I am Dansallignat . . . I am Greensparrow, king of Avonsea!” the beast roared.
Then the dragon flinched, an involuntary twist, perhaps, and Brind’Amour was quick to the offensive, hurling yet another bolt, this one white and streaking like lightning. The dragon roared; the wizard screamed in pain as all his energy, all his life force, was hurled into that one bolt. Magic was a power limited by good sense, but Brind’Amour had no options of restraint now, not when facing such a foe. He felt his heart fluttering, felt his legs go weak, but still he energized the bolt, launched himself into it fully, sapping every ounce of strength within him and hurling it, transformed, into the great beast.